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hindered the sunlight and hid them now from view, and Fraley lay in her covert trembling. Oh, had they seen her, and were they coming to trap her here as she hid?
    Perhaps Brand had called out Shorty’s vicious hounds, and they were even now coming upon her from the other direction. Perhaps that pointing on the mountain ridge had been signaling to the others. They might all be upon her in a few minutes, and what could she do? There was positively no place to which she could flee in the wide-open landscape, and there was no possibility that these sparse bushes would cover her if a search party came near. Oh, if there were only a hole in the ground!
    Then it came to her that she might cover herself with grass. Perhaps they would not get here before the sun was much lower, and they might not notice, though the hounds would surely search her out if they were along. But it seemed the only thing she could do, so she fell to pulling the grass and piling it into a great heap beside her.
    She crouched as close to the bushes as she could get, burrowing her body into the loose soil until the old coat was almost on a level with the surrounding ground and the precious bag containing her treasures was beneath her. Then she set to work as well as she could to cover herself with the grass she had pulled, satisfied at last that she would not be noticeable unless someone came quite near. She put her face down on her arms and lay still under her camouflage, and before long there came a sound of voices and of hoofbeats ringing across the water.
    Fraley, in her flimsy refuge, cringed and held her breath!

Chapter 5
    F raley’s worst fears were realized as the enemy drew near. It was indeed, as she had guessed, the three men—Pete and Shorty and Pierce—and, as she had thought, they had come that way in answer to a signal from Brand, who had found the body of the dead dog lying in the clear water of the river.
    The three men came riding down from the mountain and halted a little way from the water just across from the clump of bushes that hid the trembling girl, and there they waited until Brand came riding up on the other side. He forded the river not ten feet above the little grass mound that covered Fraley’s old coat, and she held her breath and tried to keep from trembling as she listened to the splash of his horse’s feet when he stepped out into the water.
    She could hear all they said. They were not drunk now, and their curses were so much the more cold blooded and deliberate as each man told with a coarse laugh what he would do to the culprit when he found her. Fraley shut her eyes and wondered if hell were like this, and wondered again, as she had done many times of late, why God made men.
    It appeared that there were other search parties out for her now. Shorty had been warned and was to pass the word along. There wasn’t a man within the outlaws’ territory that wouldn’t rise to the occasion and keep a keen lookout along his border. She heard them name the places and gathered much helpful information from their discussion, the only trouble with it being that there did not seem to be any direction she could turn in which she might find egress into the world beyond. They had shut up the gates of their world and guarded all their defenses. How could she hope to escape?
    She had no words with which to pray, but she lay there calling in her heart to God, and presently, seemingly without reason, the men all turned their horses and galloped away across the valley. Cautiously she peered through the thicket to watch them, marveling that they were gone, not daring to come out of her covert lest there be someone still in ambush lurking behind her.
    She lay there until the damp ground chilled her to the bone and a sick dizziness descended upon her. She wondered how long it took people to die of starvation. She was not near that yet, for there were still stores within her bag, but she felt a strange apathy about eating anything. If she